Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (To the Greater Glory of God)
First Reading:
From: Jeremiah 18:18-20
Jeremiah’s Fourth “Confession”
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[18] Then they said, “Come, let us make plots against Jeremiah, for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, let us smite him with the tongue, and let us not heed any of his words.”
[19] Give heed to me, O LORD, and hearken to my plea. [20] Is evil a recompense for good? Yet they, have dug a pit for my life. Remember how I stood before thee , to speak good for them, to turn away thy wrath from them.
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Commentary:
18:18-23. Jeremiah feels hemmed in by his enemies when he proclaims the word of the Lord, and in this fourth “confession” he expresses how he feels. His situation causes him great pain. God called him to intercede for the people, and he has done so; but, although he has sought only their good, they plot against him (v. 18). These words have been interpreted as an announcement of how the Jewish authorities schemed against Jesus, seeking to arrest him (cf. Mt 22:15; Mk 12:13; Lk 20:20). And the resistance that Jeremiah encountered in his preaching is interpreted by St Jerome, in the light of the New Testament, as a prefiguring of the difficulties that Jesus would encounter from people “who spread calumnies and slander to frustrate the work of holy men. So that the truths that these disciples taught would be rejected as lies, they made the law and the plans of God the property of their priests and wise men and false prophets (cf. 18:18)” ("Commentarii in Ieremiam", 4, 18).
The harsh things that Jeremiah says in this prayer (vv. 21-23) are not so much a desire for vengeance on his part as an assertion of the respect that is owed to God and his word, which no one has a right to mock (cf. Ps 6; 79; 109).